No one likes a show-off. Even if you’ve won 19 major trophies in a 20 year football career and have reinvented yourself into a $1bn empire spanning fashion, music and film, it isn’t a good look to cry out for recognition. Yet any obituary of Brand Beckham in light of the email leak is…
David Beckham epitomises the modern celebrity age: in any other era, we wouldn’t have blinked an eyelid at a 38 year old footballer, other than for the sheer amount of time he had managed to stay in the game. Past his prime, we may no longer celebrate his on-pitch prowess in the same way, but…
Tottenham Hotspur have pulled off a nifty coup for the New Year, bringing David Beckham in to train after a few weeks of speculation and “will he/won’t he?” in the tabloids. Regarding Beckham actually playing for the team, nothing is certain still, but that is hardly the point. The point is that this is a…
So Russia have the 2018 World Cup and it’s to go to Qatar in 2022. Anyone trying to suggest that this decision has anything to do with football needs to go away and sit quietly in a dark corner whilst they reevaluate their opinion. The decision by FIFA bigwigs is solely about where the power…
Conundrum of the week is the strange case of why In Touch magazine ran a story suggesting athletic rumpy pumpy between Beckham and exotic model-come-prostitute Irma Nici. I might be wrong, but it all feels so fake. Certainly, David Beckham looks set to sue the US magazine for the claims that he went a bit…
We are living in a karaoke media culture – everything we see is a pale, recycled copy of something that’s gone before and, worse still, this sincere flattery of icons and iconography past is being actively encouraged. Miley Cyrus is heading off down the well-trodden path of over-sexualised image that has been presented 1000 times…
Another piece, by me, on the Tiger Woods brand disintegration has appeared in Guardian Online’s Media section. It looks at the way that sports endorsement has been shifting away from volatile and risky sports stars, and at where the big money is settling in the aftermath of the Tiger Woods PR meltdown. “Let’s get one…
I was asked to comment on the fallout from Tiger Woods’s bad week in the press by the Guardian last week – the resulting article appears in today’s Media section and online under the headline In Need of a Tigerish Attorney. I took a critical look at the way he and his lawyer, Mark NeJame,…
I was asked by the Times what could save Tiger Woods’ reputation in the wake of the revelations that he has, as he put it in his guarded press release the other day, “transgressed”. I told them that the next step for Woods could be a public display of contrition, perhaps in a television interview….
It seems, of late, that sleaze is a gift worth giving and that it’s for life, not just for Christmas or for politicians. The latest example – the News of the World phone tapping scandal – is, in Variety’s slanguage, a “dramedy”. It has the potential for seriously succulent consequences, which might be deeply costly…